DOC­TOR Strange

Stuff you need to know about Marvel’s Strangest en­try yet

Marvel has been gen­tly teas­ing the might­i­est ma­gi­cian in the cos­mos for a few movies now, and Stephen Vin­cent Strange MD is now fi­nally set to sprin­kle his magic. But with Cap­tain Amer­ica: Civil War jug­gling the full Al­bert Square of sto­ry­lines and char­ac­ters, Doc­tor Strange – di­rected by Sin­is­ter’s Scott Der­rick­son – is go­ing to be a mostly self-con­tained ori­gin story. Mostly.

SLEUTH TO SOR­CERER

Lofty ar­ro­gance? Ex­tra­or­di­nary in­tel­li­gence? Weighty foibles? Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch sounds like the per­fect fit for the sil­ver streaks, with the movie em­ploy­ing a fairly straight bat with the ba­sic story: the world’s great­est neu­ro­sur­geon has his mar­vel­lous hands man­gled, send­ing him across the planet – and even­tu­ally the di­men­sions – in search of mean­ing, bridg­ing the science world and the mys­tic one to be­come Sor­cerer Supreme.

YOU’RE HIRED

But first Strange has to serve an ap­pren­tice­ship un­der the An­cient One, a Hi­malaya-based Marvel-Yoda look­ing to pass the cos­mic crown on to a wor­thy younger head be­fore she ex­its this plain of re­al­ity. Marvel’s cast­ing crew has played a blinder, swap­ping the gen­der and cast­ing “am­bigu­ous” Tilda Swin­ton in the part.

CLASS RI­VAL

The Good Doc­tor’s won’t be the only bumprint on the An­cient One’s up­hol­stery. But while for­mer stu­dent Baron Karl Mordo isn’t en­tirely en­am­oured of the new teacher’s pet, Chi­we­tel Ejio­for’s Tran­syl­va­nian grudge-packer will be fol­low­ing the beat of Strange’s drum… this time around any­way.

DARK­NESS RISES

Who’s Doc­tor Strange’s big bad then? Well, “me­nac­ing” Mads Mikkelsen is on board as a hush hush char­ac­ter, but let’s not beat about the bush with your Night­mares or Satan­nishs here. We’ll just say he’s play­ing Dor­mammu, the Lord of the Realm of Dark­ness – a blaz­ing beast from an­other di­men­sion and Sor­cerer Supreme’s num­ber one foe.

CLEA AND PRESENT DAN­GER

If we’re chalk­ing Mads up as Dor­mammu, then that would make Rachel McA­dams’s sim­i­larly top-se­cret role Clea, Strange’s fu­ture paramour from the Dark Di­men­sion and also Dor­mammu’s niece. We’d bank on Clea ditch­ing the flam­ing fam­ily ties and get­ting reg­is­tered to a new surgery by the cli­max.

A GEM OF A STORY

Of course Doc­tor Strange is go­ing to tie in with the rest of the MCU, specif­i­cally by way of the Infinity Gems or – as they’ve been re­branded – the In­fi­nite Six. The Sor­cerer Supreme just hap­pens to have the pow­er­ful-if-per­ni­cious Soul Stone swing­ing around his neck – ex­pect the neck­lace to get passed on from the An­cient One to Doc­tor Strange be­fore find­ing it­self pow­er­ing Thanos’s Infinity War.